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MUSCODA, 1763-1856 



BY 

JOSEPH SCHAFER 




Reprinted from the Wisconsin Magazine of History 
Volume IV, Number 1, September, 1020 




fhoi^ by 
Edward C. Nelson 



WM. STEPHEN HAMILTON, FOUNDER OF MUSCODA 



MUSCODA, 1763-1856 



BY 
JOSEPH SCHAFER 




Reprinted from the Wisconsin Magazine of History 
Volume IV, Number i, September, 1920 



. H^8 S z<] 



By TrHCJ'*** 

NOV 22 1920 



MUSCODA, 1763-1856 
Joseph Schafer 

The light which local inquiry can shed upon general 
history is well illustrated from a variety of viewpoints in the 
story of the Wisconsin village which is the subject of this 
sketch. 

Muscoda as a present-day railway station is inconspicu- 
ously located on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
line, Prairie du Chien division, at the distance of fifty-six 
miles almost due west from Madison, one hundred and 
fifty-two from Milwaukee; it is forty-two miles east from 
Prairie du Chien. The village was begun at the river bank 
on the south side of Wisconsin River, in section 1 , township 
8 north, range 1 west of the fourth principal meridian. It 
stretches south from the river toward the flanking hills 
about three-fourths of a mile, the main portion now cluster- 
ing about the depot, whereas the "Old Town" lay farther 
north and hugged the river bank. 

The ground on which Muscoda stands is a portion of the 
sandy plain, the outwash of the erosion process by which the 
Wisconsin and its larger tributaries worked their way 
through the sandstone stratum. The upper courses of these 
tributaries and the smaller streams which feed them have 
laid down flood bottoms of rich alluvium. Often, too, the 
bench land of their valleys is a fertile limestone soil inter- 
mingled with clayey patches and occasional streaks of sand. 
These are all characteristics of the "Driftless Area," as the 
geologists have named this region, because the various 
primordial movements of glacial ice, so influential in modi- 
fying the topography elsewhere, passed around instead of 
over it, leaving no "drift" upon it. The terrain is just what 
the eroding waters in the course of countless ages made it — a 



Josef h Schafer 

system of regular valleys perfectly drained and bounded 
by symmetrically sculptured hills or bluffs, which exhibit 
a level sky line and decrease in altitude steadily till at the 
heads of the streams they merge in the great plateau or 
"prairie" of southern Wisconsin. The valleys make natural 
and not ill-graded highways from the prairie to the Wiscon- 
sin River, while the ranges of bluffs separating them appear 
like promontories running out fingerwise from the main 
plateau and terminating either where two smaller streams 
converge or at the edge of the lower plain laid down by the 
Wisconsin. 

The principal stream entering the Wisconsin from the 
south, in the neighborhood of Muscoda, is Blue River — the 
"Riviere Bleu" of the French traders. It has several head 
streams rising in township 6-1 E, and a large affluent named 
the Fennimore rising in 6-1 W, the Six Mile Creek, rising in 
7-1 E and Sandy Branch which heads in 8-1 E. There 
are also several small branches entering the Fennimore from 
7-2 W^ In its lower course the Blue River swerves to the 
west, entering the Wisconsin near Blue River Station, in 
Township 8-2 W, but its rich upper valleys and those of its 
tributaries have always been mainly within the trade area of 
Muscoda. North of the Wisconsin the valleys most inti- 
mately associated with Muscoda are Indian Creek, Eagle 
Creek, and Knapp's Creek in Richland County. The 
"Sand Prairie," by which name the sandy plain along the 
Wisconsin on the south side has long been known, and a 
narrow tract of shelving land between the river and the hills 
on the north are also within the Muscoda area. 

Since the bluffs are mostly rough land, with only limited 
areas on their summits where the soil is deep, free from 
stones, and sufficiently even for cultivation, and the sand 
prairie comparatively infertile, Muscoda as a trade center 
suffers from the low average productivity of her territory. 
Still, from pioneer days the long valleys beyond the sand 



Muscoda, 17 63-1856 5 

prairie have yielded abundant harvests; the roads through 
them from the high prairie to the south opened to Muscoda's 
merchants for some years a great trade in hvestock and grain 
beyond her legitimate boundaries; while the cross ranges 
which run out from the high prairie northward approximate- 
ly fifteen miles forced the only rival railway,^ when it came, 
back upon the great ridge, leaving the north trending valleys 
still as a whole tributary to Muscoda. 

THE BACKGROUND 

According to Father Verwyst, a distinguished authority, 
the name Muscoda is a corruption of the Chippewa word 
"Mashkodeng" which means "prairie." A similar corrup- 
tion occurs in the name "Muscatine," a town in Iowa, and 
there was a tribe of Indians on the Upper Fox River called 
Mascouten (prairie Indians). 

The earlier name of the place was English Prairie, and 
while it is clear that geography suggested "Prairie" (or 
Savannah), there are various traditions to explain the asso- 
ciation of the word "English" with it. One is that some 
English families were settled there as early as 1812 and that 
they were massacred by the Indians. Another, that the place 
was so named from the fact that Colonel McKay, wiio 
descended the river in 1814 with a regiment of British 
troops to capture Prairie du Chien, encamped at this place 
which thereafter was called English Prairie. 

A more hopeful clue to the origin of the name occurs in 
the journal of Willard Keyes, a young New Englander who 
passed down the river wath a party in 1817. He writes, 
under date of August 29, 1817: "pass a place called 'English 
meadow' from an English trader and his son, said to have 
been murdered there by the savages, 20 Leagues to Prairie 

^ The Chicago and Northwestern. It follows in the sector south of Muscoda the 
old military road from Fort Winnebago to Fort Cra\\-ford. Towns taking some of Mus- 
coda's former trade are Montfort, Fennimore, and Cobb. 



6 Joseph Schafer 

du Chien."2 Now, the fact of "an English trader and his 
son" being murdered at some point on the Wisconsin River 
between the Portage and Prairie du Chien is well established. 
In the journal of Lieut. James Gorrell, the first English 
commandant at Green Bay after the ejection of the French, 
we read, under date of June 14, 1763: "The traders came 
down from the Sack [Sauk] country, and confirmed the 
news of Landsing and his son being killed by the French." 
When all the Sauk and Foxes had arrived at Green Bay a 
few days later they told Gorrell that their people were all in 
tears "for the loss of two English traders who were killed 
by the French in their lands, and begged leave ... to 
cut them [the French] in pieces."^ 

In the following summer, 1764, Garrit Roseboom testi- 
fied, that "about the latter end of April, 1763, he was going 
from the Bay [Green Bay] to the Soaks [Sauk] to look for 
his Partner Abrah[a]m Lancing who had been up there, 
being told that he was killed, that on his way he met some 
Indians coming down with some Packs [of furs], which he 
knew to be his, and which they said he could have for paying 
the carriage. That both the French and Indians told him, 
Mr. Lancing and his son were killed by two Frenchmen" 
who were servants of Mr. Lansing and who afterwards 
escaped to the Illinois Indians.^ 

When we reflect how persistent is the memory of great 
tragedies and recall that some of the French traders and 
voyageurs who were on the river when the murder took 
place remained there for many years and handed down the 
traditions of the river to their successors, it is not hard to 
believe that it was the story of Abraham Lansing and his 
son, slightly altered, which Willard Keyes heard from the 
rivermen as his boat drifted along the "English meadow" in 

* Wisconsin Magazine of History, III, 352. 

* Wisconsin Historical Collections, I, 38, 41. 

* Wis. Hist. Colls. XVIII. 263-64. 



Muscoda, 1763-1856 7 

1817. The French traders in whose company he was would 
not be Hkely to ascribe the murder to their own people so 
long as there were "savages" who might just as well serve 
as scapegoats. AVe may consider it almost certain, then, 
that the place came to be called English Prairie from the 
gruesome crime of 1763, which had occurred almost three- 
quarters of a century before the postoffice of that name was 
established, and more than half a century prior to the voy- 
age of Willard Keyes. Jonathan Carver, who visited a vil- 
lage of the Fox Indians at that place in 17G6, does not use the 
name; but neither does he mention the story of the murder 
which occurred only three years before. 

No definite information about the fur trade at English 
Prairie, aside from the record in Lansing's case, has come 
down to us. Tradition has it that Laurent Rolette, brother 
of the famous Prairie du Chien trader, Joseph Rolette, 
traded there for some years, going later to the Portage. It 
appears also that some time before the arrival of white set- 
tlers a trader named Armstrong operated in that neighbor- 
hood. But no details have been preserved and we can only 
infer from the fact that Indians were still numerous when 
settlers came that the trade at English Prairie in earlier 
times was probably important. 

It was the Black Hawk War and the treaties following it 
that produced the revolutionary change in the life of the 
natives in this region. From that time forward Indians 
could live south of the river only on sufferance, though they 
were permitted to roam the forests to the northward for 
about a quarter of a century longer. During the Black 
Hawk War a detachment of Colonel Henry Dodge's 
Mounted Volunteers went to English Prairie, another de- 
tachment going at the same time to Prairie du Chien. 
Between them these two bodies of troops scoured both sides 
of the Wisconsin from the mouth to the Portage, dislodging 
all natives. English Prairie was also the camping ground for 



8 Joseph S chafer 

a military company composed of friendly Indians recruited 
at Green Bay and led to Prairie du Chien by Samuel C. 
Stambaugh in July, 1832. The route of march was from 
Green Bay to the Portage, thence to Sugar Creek (near 
Blue Mounds), thence to Fort Dodge (Dodgeville), thence 
to English Prairie, thence to Prairie du Chien "with one 
other camping between." 

RELATION TO THE LEAD MINES 

History repeats itself in making the Indian War of 
1832 the impulse to a great new expansion movement 
among American pioneers. Just as the Pequod War of 
1638 by familiarizing the coast settlers of Massachusetts 
with the rich lands of the interior enticed them westward, 
and as the Seven Years' War destroyed the last obstacle 
to western and northern expansion in New England, so in a 
very real sense this war made the beginnings of the agricul- 
tural settlement in Wisconsin. Immediately after the Black 
Hawk War the survey of the lands in southern Wisconsin 
began. In the four years, 1832 to 1836, the entire region 
from the Illinois line north to the Wisconsin, the Fox, and 
Green Bay, and from the Mississippi to Lake Michigan, 
was checked off into townships and sections. Hardy, re- 
sourceful government surveyors, with their crews (usually 
two chainmen and one axman) traversed every square mile, 
whether prairie, forest, valley, or bluff. In 1834 a land 
office was opened at Mineral Point for the sale of lands in 
the western portion of Michigan Territory (as it was then) . 

The ranges of townships numbered 1 W and 1 E, of 
which the townships numbered eight (Muscoda and 
Pulaski) bounded by the Wisconsin, were for some years the 
northernmost, were surveyed by Sylvester Sibley in 1833. 
The next year those lands were offered for sale and some 
tracts along the river were actually sold to private individu- 
als. Among the purchasers were Thomas Jefferson Par- 



o 



a, W 

i ^ 



►^ 




10 Joseph Schafer 

rish and Charles Bracken, who were well-known lead miners 
and smelters living farther south. Others among the early 
land owners of Township 8-1 W have been identified as 
mining men. 

The lead mines, while known and worked by Indians and 
a few traders for many years, received the first large body 
of emigrants in 1828, when several thousand came scattering 
out widely over the territory which now constitutes Grant, 
Iowa, and Lafayette counties in Wisconsin, together with 
adjacent parts of Iowa. These were the lead miners who 
under Dodge and Hamilton fought the Black Hawk War. 
It was these hardy pioneers who as troopers patrolled the 
Wisconsin River and who finally delivered the coup de 
grace to Black Hawk's band far to the north on the banks of 
the Mississippi. 

Many of the lead miners were shrewd business men 
always on the lookout for good financial prospects. With 
the knowledge of new regions gained during the war, either 
from personal observation or from reliable report, with the 
sense of a new era opening to settlement and expansion in 
the region dependent for transportation facilities on the 
Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers, it is not strange that some 
of them should have been interested in river points lying 
as far outside the mineral belt proper as did English Prairie. 

A RIVER PORT 

For it is clear that it was water and not lead that the 
pioneers of Muscoda sought. Surveyors and prospectors 
had found no hopeful signs of mineral north of townships 
6-1 W and 7-1 E. A few years later (1839) Dr. David Dale 
Owen, the geologist, made his famous survey of the lead 
region and excluded from it everything north of the heads 
of Blue River in townships 6 and 7-1 E. When the lands 
in township 8-1 W were offered for sale in November, 1834, 
it was precisely the river front lots and subdivisions which 



Miiscoda, 1763-1856 11 

were taken first. Parrish entered fractional lots 2 and 3 
of section 1 ; Frederick Bronson the northeast fraction of 
the southeast quarter of section 1 ; Isaac Bronson the south 
half of the southeast fractional quarter; Garrit V. Denniston 
the southeast half of the fractional southwest quarter; and 
Denniston and Charles Bracken fraction No. 4 of fractional 
section 1. Other water front tracts in section 2 were bought 
by Denniston at this time; between 1836 and 1841 other 
tracts in the same sections were bought by others. All of 
these lands were obviously deemed favorable locations for a 
prospective town dependent on river transportation. 

The way in which the village was begun, by the erection 
of a smelting furnace, is rather startling, in view of the 
absence of lead in the region adjacent. The motives which 
induced Colonel William S. Hamilton of Wiota to build a 
furnace at English Prairie can only be conjectured. 

Colonel Hamilton was the son of the great Alexander 
Hamilton, Washington's Secretary of the Treasury. As a 
lad of seventeen in 1814 he entered West Point but resigned 
in 1817 to accept a commission as deputy surveyor-general 
under Col. William Rector, surveyor-general for Illinois, 
Missouri, and Arkansas. From that time young Hamilton 
was almost continuously in the West, though he made one 
trip east, on horseback, to see his mother. He was in 
Wisconsin as early as 1825 and in 1827 began his career as a 
lead miner and smelter in what is now Lafayette County 
at Wiota or Hamilton's Diggings. He took part in the 
Indian troubles of 1827, and also in the Black Hawk War. 

It is not known with certainty when Hamilton estab- 
lished his furnace at English Prairie. Tradition says it was 
in the year 1835. If the furnace was operating then, it is 
strange that so careful an observer as Feathers tonhaugh, 
who dropped down the Wisconsin in August, 1835 and 
stopped at English Prairie to draw a sketch of its landscape, 



12 Joseph S chafer 

should have failed to note that fact.^ We are probably- 
justified in asserting that the furnace was not there at that 
time. But we know it was there in 1837, for Captain 
Frederick Marryat, a famous English writer who descended 
the river in that year, saw "a small settlement called the 
English prairie" where there was a "smelting-house and a 
steam saw-mill."^ I incline to think the year 1836 was the 
date of its beginning. In 1835 Hamilton was a candidate for 
member of the Council from the western part of Michigan 
Territory. His canvass was conducted in the lead mining 
region and his advertisement appeared in the Galena 
papers. He was elected to and became president of the 
so-called "Rump" Council which met at Green Bay Janu- 
ary 1, 1836 and sat for two weeks. During that session 
the town of Cassville, on the Mississippi, was designated 
as the territorial capital, Hamilton making the principal 
argument in favor of the movement. Much interest was 
manifested in internal improvements designed to develop a 
through line of transportation via the Wisconsin and Fox 
rivers. '^ The territory of Wisconsin was just being organ- 
ized by Congressional action and great expectations were 
being awakened in consequence. 

The miners and smelters had theretofore sold their lead 
through the commission merchants of Galena, by whom it 
was sent to St. Louis. But as new mines were opened farther 
and farther north, the cost of transportation to Galena — by 
means of the "sucker teams" ^ — steadily increased. More- 
over, in the year 1836-37 the price of lead declined so 
alarmingly that little of it was made and the smelters had 

' Featherstonhaugh was obviously in error in calling that stopping place Prairie 
de la Bay. The context shows it must have been English Prairie. See his A Canoe Voyage 
on the Minnay Sotor, I, 199-201. 

« Wis. Hist. Colls. XIV, 147. 

' The Portage canal was begun in 1836 by a private company. Its completion was 
promised in 1837. See Governor Dodge's message to the Legislative Assembly, Belmont, 
Oct. 26, 1836. 

^ Ox-teams owned by Illinois farmers. 



Muscoda, 1763-1856 13 

nearly all ceased to operate. Yet, it was felt that prices 
would rise again promptly in response to the demand for 
lead. In the same period, due no doubt partly to the hard- 
ships of the miners and smelters, there was widespread and 
loud dissatisfaction with the treatment accorded the lead 
owners by the Galena middlemen. Efforts were made to 
establish some other lead shipping port as a rival to Galena, 
which helps to explain the rise of both Cassville and Potosi. 

The inference from these facts is that Hamilton prob- 
ably thought he saw in a smelter located at the steamboat 
landing at English Prairie a possibility of immediate profit, 
even though margins were very narrow, and a chance to 
build up a flourishing business. He could buy the cheapest 
ore — that which was produced near the northern edge of 
the lead region, Centerville, Wingville, and Highland. The 
haul from those places would be short and all down grade 
and if the mineral were taken direct from the mines there 
would be no rehandling until the bars of pure lead were 
ready to be dumped from the furnace floor into the hold 
of the steamer. The teams employed to bring down the raw 
mineral could carry freight back the fifteen or twenty miles 
to the mines much more cheaply than it could be trans- 
ported from Galena or Cassville three or four times as far. 
Finally, abundant supplies of wood were at hand to feed 
the furnace, and French rivermen were a source from which 
to recruit labor. 

To an enterprising, speculative, acquisitive character 
like Hamilton, who had no family to tie him to a particular 
spot, such arguments would appeal strongly, and there is no 
inherent reason why the venture should not have suc- 
ceeded. Hamilton operated the furnace, either personally 
or by proxy, at least till 1838 and possibly longer, selling it 
finally to Thomas Jefferson Parrish, whose principal mining 
and smelting business was located at the head of Blue 
River, afterwards Montfort. 



14 Joseph S chafer 

The fact that Parrish owned the ground at the steam- 
boat landing and that in 1837 he was postmaster at Enghsh 
Prairie (then called Savannah) suggests that he may have 
been a partner in the business from the first and perhaps 
local manager of the furnace. At all events, Hamilton 
continued his business at Wiota and very soon cut loose 
entirely from the English Prairie venture.^ That place, 
under the name of Savannah or English Prairie, was a 
calling place for river steamers as early as 1838 and is 
scheduled as forty-one miles from the mouth of the Wiscon- 
sin. ^° It was said that the only boat which regularly plied 
on the river in that year was the Science, piloted by Captain 
Clark, who made his first voyage in June, 1838." But there 
were doubtless visits from steamers running to Fort Winne- 
bago (Portage) during that and earlier years. 

In one of the Milwaukee papers for 1841 is a statement 
that "four sucker teams" had brought in lead from Thomas 
Parrish's furnace "near Muscoday in Grant County." This 
reference has been taken as proof that the Muscoda furnace 
was still in operation. I think it refers not to the Muscoda 
furnace but to one of several furnaces Parrish was conduct- 
ing in the lead region near the heads of Blue River. The 
phrase "near Muscoday" used as far from the lead region 
as Milwaukee may very well mean some place fifteen or 
twenty miles from the Wisconsin; and the word "near" 
instead of "at" certainly excludes Muscoda itself. Setting 
this evidence aside, there is no proof that the Muscoda fur- 
nace was operated as late as 1841. Nor, on the other hand, 
is there proof of its earlier discontinuance. We simply do 

^ Hamilton went to California during the gold rush, finding, however, not a fortune 
but an untimely grave. 

'" See Abel, Henry I. Geographical, Geological, and Statistical Chart of Wisconsin 
and Iowa, Phila. 1838. The fare for passengers from St. Louis to Helena (it was doubtless 
the same to Savannah) was in the cabin from $10 to $15 and on the deck from $2 
to $4. 

" Smith, William R., Observations, 44. 



Muscoda, 1763-1856 15 

not know how long it was kept alive or how large a business 
it developed at the "Landing." 

SIGNS OF HARD TIMES 

Two things suggest that the little village failed to develop 
a "boom" or even to gain a basis for healthy growth. These 
are the land entries in the territory adjacent and the story 
of the post office. Practically, there were no new entries of 
land between the years 1841 and 1849. This is true for all 
the townships in the tributary region — 7, 8, and 9, range 
1 W, and 7, 8, and 9, range 1 E. The post office under the 
name of Savannah appears in the government list for the 
first time in the report for 1837. At that time Thomas J. 
Parrish was postmaster. In 1839 S. A. Holley was post- 
master, the office then being listed as English Prairie. The 
postmaster's compensation was $5.68. Charles Stephen- 
son's compensation in 1841 was even smaller, $3.36, the ne 
proceeds of the office amounting to only $7.55. In 1843, 
for the first time, the post office was called Muscoda. The 
postmaster was Levi J. D. Parrish, who received as com- 
pensation $9.29, the net proceeds of the office having risen 
to $16.51. 

It is probable that most of the seeming prosperity of 
1843 was due to the presence of the land office, which had 
been removed from Mineral Point to Muscoda in 1842. 
Some have charged that the change was brought about 
through James D. Doty's influence in order to save the 
town. If so, the scheme failed, for the land office promptly 
went back to Mineral Point in 1843, and May 16, 1845, the 
post office department discontinued the office at Muscoda. 
Muscoda was not listed in the post office report for 1847 or 
in the report for 1849. In 1851 it reappears, with James 
Moore as postmaster. Now the compensation is $39 . 74 and 
the net proceeds $53.09. The exact date of its restoration 



16 Joseph S chafer 

is not given but it must have been as early as 1850, and 
possibly 1849 or even 1847.^2 

BEGINNINGS OF SETTLEMENT 

The reopening of the Muscoda post office, about 1850, 
synchronizes with the first movement of pioneer farmers 
into the good lands tributary to that place. A number of 
tracts of land were purchased by actual settlers in this and 
adjoining townships in the years 1849 to 1851. Indeed, 
Conrad Kircher's purchase dates from 1847. Charles Miller 
and Emanuel Dunston bought land in 1849; Isaac Dale and 
Moses Manlove in 1851. We know also that the Moore 
family owned land at Muscoda as early as 1851. Across 
the river, in township 9-1 W, Robert Galloway, William 
Pickering, William and Andrew Miller, and two or three 
others bought in 1849; several in 1850; and a few others be- 
fore 1854, when the great rush came. 

A similar story can be told for township 9-1 E (now 
Orion) where J. H. Schuermann and Daniel Mainwaring 
(settlers) bought lands in 1849; Albert C. Dooley in 1850; 

*2 If the oflBce was not open in 1847 it is hard to explain the language used by a 
correspondent of the Prairie du Chien Patriot, Feb. 23, 1847, who says: "The mail from 
. . . Mineral Point to Muskoda goes but once a week. There is no post office in Richland 
County; their post office is at Muskoda." The census of 1846 assigns to the northern 
district of Grant County 1,482 persons. It is possible to identify in the lists of heads of 
families six families whose later homes were at or near Muscoda. They are John D. Par- 
rish, James Smith, Manuel Denston [Dunston?], Thomas Waters, Wm. Garland, and 
Richard Hall. All of these are met with again in the census returns for Dec. 1. 1847, 
where the "Muscoday Precinct of Grant County is listed separately. The precinct seems 
to have included townships 7 and 8-1 W and townships 7 and 8-2 W, or the present towns 
of Muscoda, Castle Rock,Watterstown, and Hickory Grove. That precinct is credited with 
thirteen families aggregating 77 persons. Aside from the families mentioned above 
(except Denston) we find the names of S. [R?] Carver, J. Moore, N. Head, M. Manlove, 
D. Manlove, I. Dale, S. Smith, D. Smith, and A Mills. Garland is credited with a family 
consisting of nine males and two females, which confirms the statement in the county 
history that he was managing a hotel in Muscoda at that time. Moses Manlove has a 
family of seven males and five females which suggests a second hotel or "boarding house." 
Most of the other families mentioned probably lived some distance from Mu.scoda on 
farms. Aside from those in Muscoda Precinct of Grant County, several families living 
in Iowa County, township 8 1-E, must have depended for their supplies either on Muscoda 
or on Highland. These were John Pettygrove, A. Palmer, A. Bolster, three Knowlton 
families, Mathias Schafer, Henry Gottschall, Vincent Dziewanawski, and the two Wall- 
bridges. If Richland County .settlers really were, as reported, getting their mail at 
Muscoda, that would mean, according to the census, that 235 persons living north of the 
Wisconsin must have done some trading at that place. The county history says the old 
log house once used as the land office served in 1847 as the store. 



Muscoda, 1763-1856 17 

and Jacob Roggy in 1851. One of the purchasers of 1848, 
John H. Siegrist, was probably the earhest actual settler in 
the township. A half dozen families bought in township 
8-1 E as early as 1849; and a few others were added before 
1854. A very few settlers were to be found in township 
7-1 W prior to 1854, and while there were a good many 
settlers and miners in township 7-1 E, the greater part of 
that township was served from Highland where a post 
office was established as early at least as 1847 and where 
there was much lead mining activity, and from Blue River 
which had a post office from 1839. These mining centers 
doubtless drew their supplies from the steamers unloading at 
MuScoda, for the road to the river at that point had been 
open for many ye^rs, but settlement was more numerous 
and local activity much more intense, as revealed by the 
post office returns. The Highland post office led the Mus- 
coda post office in importance for just about ten years — from 
1847 to 1856. With the coming of the railroad, Muscoda 
drew ahead. 

THE RAILROAD 

If one had no other evidence than the sales of land at the 
United States Land Office, it would still be clear that in the 
years 1854 to 1856 something important was astir affecting 
the value of lands in those townships (7, 8, and 9 — 
1 W, and 7, 8, and 9 — 1 E) which pivot on Muscoda 
as the trading point. For, while up to 1854 only scattering 
tracts of land had been entered, and those largely by specu- 
lators using military land warrants in making payment to the 
government, by 1856 nearly every forty-acre subdivision of 
first-rate land and much of the second-rate land also was 
under private ownership. And the state lands in the town- 
ships had also been purchased to the same extent. Besides, 
the vast majority of the purchasers of government land 
during those years were actual settlers, with only an occa- 
sional speculator.^^ 

'^ This is not true of the state lands, which went mainly to speculators first, then to 
settlers. 



18 Joseph S chafer 

These facts challenge attention and call for an explana- 
tion. Wisconsin had been in course of settlement for about 
two decades. The earliest settlements were in the south- 
eastern and eastern parts of the state where the economic 
support was the market reached by the Great Lakes and 
the Erie Canal; and in the southwestern section where the 
basis of prosperity had been lead-mining. The lead found 
its market mainly down the Mississippi, though increasingly 
the superiority of the route open to the lake ports had 
impressed itself upon the people. 

At the legislative session of 1841-42 a bill was intro- 
duced for the chartering of a railroad from Milwaukee, via 
Madison, to Potosi. Despite continuous effort, the first 
railroad bill to pass, in 1847, provided only for a railroad 
from Milwaukee to Waukesha. In 1848 this was by law 
extended to the Mississippi. 

The agitation of plans for a railroad from Lake Michi- 
gan to the Mississippi tended to give the lake route an over- 
shadowing importance in the popular mind. Actual con- 
struction work on the Milwaukee- Waukesha section began 
in 1849; that portion of the road was completed by the end 
of the year 1850, and in another year it was practically 
completed to Whitewater on Rock River. It reached Madi- 
son in the year 1854. 

The intention of the company had been to build to the 
Wisconsin River so as to intercept steamboat transportation 
at or near Arena. Thence the road might run along the 
river to its mouth, or it might run along the ridge between 
the Wisconsin and the south flowing streams, reaching the 
Mississippi at some point, like Potosi, lower down. By 
the year 1853 it had been determined to follow the Wiscon- 
sin Valley route to the Mississippi, and during that summer 
the line was surveyed from the mouth of Black Earth Creek 
to Prairie du Chien. 



Muscoda, 1763-1856 19 

It can easily be imagined how the clangor of railway 
construction echoed in the minds and hearts of intending 
settlers. That they should have watched, with greedy eye, 
the reports of progress of the location of the road and 
hurried away to the land office as soon as it was definitely 
located, to buy the good lands adjacent to the right-of-way, 
is a perfectly normal phenomenon. The township plats 
showing original purchasers of the government land tell the 
story. In section 1, township 7-1 W, four forty -acre tracts 
were bought in 1854; eleven in 1855; and one in 1856. In 
section 2, one in 1854; twelve in 1855; and two in 1857. A 
single forty had been bought as early as 1847. The other 
sections of that township show very similar dates and pro- 
portions in the entries; the same is true of the other town- 
ships of the group. The 1854 entrymen were those who 
pursued the railway surveyors with keenest determination. 
The slower ones came mainly in the two years following, 
during which trains actually were put on the roadbed. In 
October, 1856, the village of Muscoda, which had main- 
tained a precarious existence for twenty years, awoke to 
newness of life at the sound of the puffing locomotive. And 
the beginning of permanent prosperity for the village meant 
the beginning of prosperity for the rural neighborhood 
tributary to it. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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